Hommando
by Razor Scion
Summary: What if the night she tried to steal some weapons, Homura were captured by the JSDF? Oneshot.


Colonel Ishida thundered into the interrogation room with the intention of displaying the full measure of his disappointment at being woken up at three in the morning.

"Thought you could get away with it, could you?" he snapped without preamble.

The suspect sat there squirming as men with no official rank or identity in or out of the JSDF held them fast.

"I… I just-" stammered the suspect before stopping short as the Colonel slammed both hands down on the table.

"You just what?" he whispered, forcing the interogatee to squirm forwards to hear him, "Thought you could just waltz into this base and start stealing? Is that it? Just because you have one of these?"

The Colonel produced just one of the items that had been confiscated from the suspect, a purple gem encased by a golden frame.

"No…! My… my!" stuttered Homura.

"Your soul gem?" asked the Colonel glibly.

"…!" Homura practically choked on her words before she could stutter them.

"I know exactly who and what you are. I know where you go to school and who your friends are. If you answer my questions and cooperate with me, you _might_ make it through this with your precious little bauble intact, do you understand?"

With tears streaming down her face and her arms hurting from where her faceless guards held her fast, Homura could only nod in assent.

_I failed!_ She wailed internally, _I was too weak! I knew I wasn't ready to raid a military base! I should have just stuck with Yakuza hideouts! Why… why did my timestop run out prematurely? Is this my punishment?_

"Cassandra! In here! Now!" ordered Colonel Ishida in a tone that brook neither disobedience nor delay.

She stepped through the door of the interrogation room wearing a beaten up military jacket that could have been pulled straight out of a war. The scuffed boots and torn pants attested to either a life of hardship or an irrational attachment to the rough clothing.

More important than her clothes however were her eyes. They seemed to stare off, far into space… they seemed to drink the world into the abyss that had taken up residence there and find the warmth of civilisation to be wanting.

"Вы призвали меня?" said the teenage girl that was ostensibly Cassandra.

"Of course I did," groused the Colonel before finally taking the seat opposite Homura.

"W-what is this… what's happening?" asked Homura.

The Colonel stared Homura down for several, long, silent minutes. Homura, for her part, seemed to get the point rather quickly that she was not to interrupt the Colonel while he was intimidating her. At the point where the silence was just about to become boring, the Colonel flipped a mental switch inside his head and relaxed… on the surface at least.

"This is Cassandra. She's on loan from the 6th Department of Russian Military Intelligence. I am Colonel Ishida. Mention any one of those facts outside this room and…"

To demonstrate his point, the Colonel flung Homura's soulgem up before catching it again instantly.

"Understand?" he prompted.

Homura nodded furiously, straining to hold back a fresh round of tears and self recrimination.

"Good. I will ask you questions. You will answer them. Cassandra here will verify whether or not you are telling the truth. You tell me the truth and I can be a friend to you. Lie to me however…"

The Colonel let the sentence dangle unfinished. Nothing he said would match up to whatever it was the girl would mentally conjure up to torture herself.

When the Colonel had determined that Homura seemed to understand her situation to his satisfaction, he snapped open a briefcase and made a show of deliberately pulling out paperwork, pens, some Pocky that he would use later on in the interrogation to get her to lower her guard.

Just as every item he brought out was another tool to twist and manipulate the person he was interrogating, so too were the various persona's the Colonel went through. The Belligerent Colonel that got woken up at 3 AM was one such persona, as was the friendly 'I can be your friend' persona. Bad cop, Good cop, and right now, By the Book cop. Depending on the type of interrogation he had to carry out, the Colonel had more than a handful of varying personas that he could rotate through at will as the situation called for it. It kept people off balance, not knowing who or what they were getting next and prevented them from being able to invent elaborate fantasies to waste his time with.

"Your name?" he asked.

"A-Akemi… Homura," stuttered Homura.

"Speak up! I can't hear you!" snapped Colonel Ishida.

"Akemi H-Homura!" she fumbled.

"You don't sound very sure, I warned you what happened to liars here!" snapped the Colonel again. He loved playing Drill Sergeant sometimes.

"Akemi Homura!" she said with a conviction driven by fear.

The Colonel glanced towards Cassandra and transmitted a silent question.

"да", confirmed Cassandra.

The Colonel nodded to himself. A few more diagnostic questions, just to lull her into a false sense of security, and then the _real_ interrogation could begin.

* * *

"Homura-chan! Are you going to be able to make it tonight?" asked Madoka after the bell for school had finally, mercifully, rung.

"No… I can't, not tonight… I'm sorry," apologised Homura.

"It's okay, we understand. You have to do this to protect all of us," reassured Madoka before giving her a warm hug.

"I'll make sure you get a grief seed tonight though," she whispered into Homura's ear.

"No, you can't," whispered back Homura, "Miki-san will blow her lid off. She'll say I'm dragging the team down again!"

"You worry too much," reassured Madoka, "Besides, I'll just tell her I've been needing extra lately,"

"She'll figure it out," groused Homura, "She's not blind,"

"I'll worry about that, Homura-chan, now go, you'll be late for training!"

* * *

"You know," said Colonel Ishida, "If we didn't have the video evidence to prove it, we'd never know if you were actually going through with your training as we agreed or if you were just faking it,"

"You would know," huffed Homura as she passed a banged up camcorder to one of the faceless men that seemed to always be nearby the Colonel, "_She_ would tell you one way or the other."

"The truth is a powerful thing, Akemi Homura-san," said Colonel Ishida, "But it also cuts both ways. Do spare a thought for Cassandra despite all that's happened."

"I won't forgive her," stated Homura with uncharacteristic strength, "Not for what she's kept from me."

"You came to an understanding with me despite what I'd done," said the Colonel.

"That was different. What she's done… what she _continues_ to do is unforgivable," said Homura.

"Try looking at things from her perspective, Akemi-san. The world abounds with people crying out that 'The truth shall set you free!' Of course, that's just a romantic notion, something that gets told to others so they own up to their lies and start telling the truth. The truth can shackle you just as much as it can set you free," mused the Colonel.

"But-!"

"Consider," interrupted the Colonel, "what if her answer to your question is something you'd rather not hear, Akemi-san. If she answered your question definitively either way, that truth would become your truth. If she were to answer such a question, it would become immutably true for you. She can never lie. That is her power. That is her blessing. That is her curse."

Homura absorbed his words, but could not bring herself to accept them. They made no sense to her.

"Perhaps another five laps will set you straight," said the Colonel.

"Eh! What? But…!"

"Go!" snapped the Colonel, "Snap to it! I don't even know why we're even bothering with the camera anymore! Get to it soldier!"

"Y-Yes sir!" stammered Homura as she snapped off a salute.

With a twist of her disk, she stopped time and started to run her laps.

* * *

"You have got to be shitting me," swore Cpl. Kaworu the moment he saw their civilian attaché arrive.

"My name is Akemi Homura, I'll be accompanying you on this mission and will be providing you with intelligence," she said coolly.

"Sarge, who did we piss off to get this chickenshit tagging along with us?" moaned Lt. Kaworu.

"You have a fat mouth, Kaworu, shut it before I shut you. Orders are orders! We've got a code Lambda in this building. Our orders are to go in, neutralize the threat, and get out," shouted Sergeant Tanigawa.

"Kaworu's got a point Sarge, shouldn't we wait for backup?" asked Private Okabe "If Lambda's are real then we need a squad at least."

"I am your backup," said Homura levelly.

"Hey don't worry Kaworu, the teenage girl will save you from the Lambda's!" mocked Private Okazaki.

"Shut up each and every one of you!" snapped Sergeant Tanigawa.

Fortunately, the fireteam had been together for a while now under Sergeant Tanigawa's leadership and knew that when he got serious it was time to stop screwing around, shut up and act professional.

"You have all been provided with specialised equipment for this mission," said Homura, indicating a pair of goggles, ear and nose plugs, "I suggest you wear them immediately."

If any of the fireteam disapproved of the unusual headwear prior to a raid on an old abandoned building, none of them voiced it. Even so, Homura could sense their doubts creeping to the surface… a side effect of being so close to a Lambda.

"Without your equipment you would not be able to see nor hear a Lambda, let alone their Kappas," said Homura, "No matter how ridiculous you look or feel, these will save your life."

Homura didn't feel the need to elaborate on the nose plugs. They'd taken her at her word for some time now.

"Alright," started Sergeant Tanigawa, "I'll take point. Protect Akemi-san. She's our dead weight until shit gets hot. Move in on my signal, five meter spread, no sound."

For a tense moment all was still. The soldiers that had once openly mocked her now took protective positions around her in anticipation of the battle to come. With a silent hand signal, Sergeant Tanigawa began operation Witch Breaker.

* * *

"That's it, isn't it?" asked Major General Kaname Akira, "the mother of all Lambda's?"

"Walpurgis Night," said Homura dispassionately.

She'd faced this creature once before as a powerless human, helpless to alter the outcome. Now she had her magic, a team of magical girls, and the largest army assembled in peacetime Japan at her back ready to pummel this creature into the dirt.

"Look at all the Kappa's!" exclaimed the Major General "Is my grand daughter really going to fight all of them? Can she fight all of them?"

"Yes," said Homura, "Though I know few believe me, I've seen it before in a prior timeline. Kaname Madoka is capable of defeating Walpurgis Night. Alone, she will die… but with our support she cannot possibly meet that fate a second time."

"What if we fail?" asked the Major General, sharing the doubt with the only person he could at this critical time.

"If we fail, I'll turn back time and do it all over again. I'll bring back the details of how and why we failed. General, my wish was to protect your grand daughter. A girls wish, when it is granted by the Sigma's, always comes to pass. We will succeed, if not here, then in a future timeline. No matter how long it takes, my wish will come true."

The General nodded, heartened by the girl's confidence.

"I think of all the lives we've saved as a result of working with you," said the General, "I cannot be more proud of that. Now here we stand, ready to save one hundredfold more. We cannot fail them. We _will_ not fail them."

"It's time," said Homura, "I must join the others. Good luck,"

And she was gone.

Kaname Akira grinned to himself, still amused by that disappearing act of hers.

"A good general doesn't need luck," he said, before opening a radio channel to the rest of the army, "All units, open fire, fire at will!"

The empty evacuated streets of Mitakihara glowed with light as the sky was filled with fire and fury.

War had come to Walpurgis Night.


End file.
